It’s actually harder than it sounds to come up with a saying that is symmetrical. For example of one that works well, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough gets going’. But try creating a new one out of a phrase that sounds cool, and that hasn’t been done before. My latest try is this one for clever people; ‘they know how to make small things big, & big things small’. Of course, as a pure saying is been used many times before, so its the context that I’m value-adding here. And in a way that’s what’s beautiful about social software, that it can support that small>big/big>small.

Most successful people know how to make small things big (grow a company etc, design a system), but don’t know how to boil that back down again for general understanding. Useful ability when doing business across people cultures, or across technical and non-technical. And it’s amazing how common people think they can do that, when they can’t (there’s still some remnant of the ‘big’). That’s (plz humour me here) because the ‘big’ and the ‘small’ often involves connecting the divide between ‘educated knowledge’ and the way most people work ‘everyday knowledge’. Top down communication gives the powerful illusion of connecting this chasm, but does experience support this? I ask you?

Funnily enough there’s a Independent forum debate on this theme inspired by the marketing for the Toyota Yaris, with the tagline bigSMALL:

The list

*thong bikinis
*alcohol shots
*diamond rings
-all very small things that create a very big impact!
Charli, Billericay